Billionaire's Don't Know Everything

I had never heard of Sam Zell until last week, when it was announced that he was going to be buying the Tribune Co.

But after reading about what he thinks of Google, I think he's a moron. Granted, he apparently knows a thing or to about real estate and business. But when it comes to newspapers and the net, he hasn't done his research.

Jason Calacanis explained it all quite well so I won't bother going into much more detail. But I'll proudly say that when I first read about this whole thing I said similar things to my wife that were Jason's main points (prior to reading his post).

Most important of those facts is that Google News doesn't have ads (i.e. Google doesn't make a dime from "stealing" content from the papers) and newspapers should be glad Google is linking to them because they get more eyeballs on their sites.

As has been said before, the newspapers are dead. And they're even more dead if Sam Zell is going to try to pull this.

Who in the world would actually pay to get news anymore anyway?